


Hungry Ghosts

by toodlepip



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Episode: s01e16 Shuttlepod One, M/M, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 11:55:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13007253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toodlepip/pseuds/toodlepip
Summary: Mayweather reckons ghosts have taken up residence on the Enterprise. Reed and Tucker know more than they're letting on.





	Hungry Ghosts

Ensign Mayweather was a consummate story-teller; there was no denying it. He held the assembled crew spellbound. 

"As ships grow old, restless spirits find them," he told them. "Where there is air pressure in a conduit, there will always be ghosts looking for the voices they've left behind. There are mute spirits everywhere, even in the infinite cold of space. The empty spaces in starships give them a home again, and a voice. That's what we found. Over the years, we started hearing things; a voice muttering in the engine-room, something weeping in the cargo bay."

They watched him, rapt.

He took a sip of his drink. "It's a strange thing to hear the dead groaning in the darkness, but I'm telling you, it happens. We used to hear them, on the _Horizon_ , crying out. They take the voice of the ship as a surrogate for their own. They need to be heard. They want to be reborn... and I've heard them on this ship, too. Somewhere, in some lost region of space, we picked up a stowaway... There are ghosts on this ship, and they're hungry." 

Someone gave a poorly-repressed giggle. Hoshi jumped. 

"You might not believe me," Mayweather said, "You'll find out."

"I don't hear anything at night," Hoshi said, "and I'm _always_ listening." 

Mayweather grinned. "That's because you don't spend much time on F Deck."

"The launch bay? Why would I?" 

He shrugged. "I do. There's a great spot between F and G deck where the gravity's almost neutral. I go there now and then."

Malcolm Reed caught Trip Tucker's eye. He raised a pair of very English eyebrows. To those who knew him, a fragment of a smile showed on his lips.

Tucker, almost imperceptibly, shook his head. 

Malcolm gave a tiny shrug. 

"There's a restless spirit on the ship," Mayweather said. "A hungry ghost. I've heard it, crying out..." 

Tucker successfully converted another giggle into a cough. He stood up. "Y'know, I love me a good ghost story, but I have ta work on that deck now and then, so I reckon I'm gonna get myself some sleep. Y'all enjoy the rest of the story." 

Malcolm smiled tightly. "Sounds like a good idea. I have a morning shift. Sleep well, Commander. Good night, all."

* * *

Malcolm caught up with Trip by the turbolift. "Sir," he said, impersonally, "would you care for a snifter before calling it a night?"

Trip shrugged. "I'm off duty," he said. "I don't mind if I do."

Malcolm held up a bottle. "Observation deck?" 

"F Deck?" Trip said, half-laughing. "Aren't you afraid of the ghosts?"

"Not a bit. I'm pretty sure we can give any ghost a run for its money," Malcolm said. "Ghost hunters, on the other hand-" 

They entered the turbolift, Trip watching Malcolm closely. As the doors closed, Trip broke into full-scale laughter. "You're damned lucky the lights were dimmed in the mess. You're bright red." 

Malcolm touched his glowing cheeks. "I've never been called a hungry ghost before," he said. "I've been called a lot of things, mind you, just never that -"

"Hell, you can't blame them. You probably scared Travis out of his wits."

"Me?" Malcolm played with the cork on the bottle, ignoring Trip's steely eyes. "I seem to remember having, ah, company on that jaunt. I don't see how you get off scot-free..."

Trip put a deliberate hand onto Malcolm's, pushing the bottle down and to one side. "How I get off?" he repeated, closing the difference between them, chest against chest, so close that Malcolm could feel his breath, warm, smelling faintly of milk, on his cheek. "I kind of thought we'd covered that -"

The turbolift arrived. 

Malcolm smiled faintly. "I don't know _what_ you mean, sir," he said, and, drawing himself primly up, stepped past Trip and outwards to the corridor.

Trip sighed. "Yeah, you just keep tellin' yourself that..." 

He followed Malcolm out of the lift, knowing already how the evening would end.

* * *

The stars were, as they always were, a mesmerising and beautiful sight. The bourbon was warm, and tasted faintly of peat and old oak barrels and grain grown in the light of a far-distant star. They drank sparingly, sharing a mug, as though by their parsimony the evening could be induced to fade away into the ever-lengthening night promised by the nothingness around them. That time could pause, be forced to stop, for long enough, an eternity - however brief - in which they were at last safe to pause, to relax, to close their eyes and simply breathe. 

Every breath was a gift. They knew that, now. Each tidal breath, so small, so silent, represented a victory of their tiny bubble of life against the emptiness of forever. Nothing was granted, in space. Nothing could be taken as read.

Something wriggled in the darkness, a glow-worm fading from sight before Trip could be sure that it wasn't just a spot on his retina, a fading remnant of dust responding to the brightness of a distant nebula. If they'd learned anything from their voyage, so far, it was that there were _more things in heaven and Earth_ , or, in any case, more things in space, than any of them had expected. It was spooky here, a little, or might have been if Trip had truly been alone. But he wasn't...

Malcolm gasped under Trip's touch. 

Trip smiled. 

"Oh, it's not you," Malcolm said, absently. "It's an old water polo injury. Flares up every now and then..."

Trip laughed, swooping in for a kiss. "You've been talkin' to the Cap'n," he said, when they were done. 

"Listening, mostly."

Malcolm's lips were red and hungry. Trip caressed his face gently, a gesture born of a fierce kind of protectiveness that he could neither quantify nor entirely account for, even to himself.

The turbolift whirred. 

"I guess we better get going," Trip said. "Sounds like the souvenir hunters are on their way..."

* * *

The conduits were easy enough to find, if you knew where to look. The _other_ conduits were harder, but fortunately they both knew the route, with a familiarity born of experience, and practice, and readiness to explore. 

Malcolm manhandled the hatch back into place, sealing the bolts with a practiced flick of the thumb.

"Should be safe enough now," he said, impassive. And he pushed off, outwards, towards the inner side of the hull. The gravitational plating was so close here that perceptions of 'up' and 'down' were fluid; his inner ear insisted that he had fallen in a figure-of-eight as he leapt/fell towards the wall/ceiling/floor. _Enterprise_ was designed to hide these paradoxes from the casual visitor, as far as possible, but this place was a proof that underneath the skin, physics remained king. F Deck was a locus for crazy once you looked past the skin. 

Mayweather frequented the central access tunnels; there, the gravity was a mere suggestion of Earth-normal, if anything could be felt at all but a general, vague confusion of conflicting forces. As a reaction, Trip and Malcolm had opted for the other kind of craziness, the areas where gravity pulled at them, playing crazy games with their perception of weight and orientation.

Trip flew, cartwheeling into a controlled fall, with a gentle thump against the ground. He gave a little pained sound, and let his head fall, tousled blonde highlights wet with sweat and plastered against his scalp. The bulkhead behind him was cold and a touch damp with condensation, the moisture of warm air cooling against the inner hull. 

Malcolm fell into his grasp, legs planted to either side of his waist, the two of them sitting on the wall. 

"You good?" Trip said.

"Never better," Malcolm said. "Well, that's a slight exaggeration. There was this one time with Fenella Fenchurch at her father's stables, when I... well, it's a long story, but I was fishing straw out of my hair for weeks afterwards, and - I'm over-sharing, aren't I?"

Trip laughed. "You don't have to do that, you know? You're safe here."

Malcolm shook his head. "It's part of me now," he said. "It's... well, it's a package deal. Take it all, or leave it be..."

Malcolm was never easy in an introspective mood, but they could be broken. Trip fastened his arms on Malcolm's shoulders and welcomed him in, until they faced each other, eye to eye, mouth to mouth, chests close, Malcolm's breaths competing with his own for space and time and warmth. He waited until their breathing settled. 

Once they began to breathe together, calmer, he ran his left arm down Malcolm's back, tracing the curve of his spine, down towards his butt, and caressed him until Malcolm's spine began to relax, eyes drowsy, arms limply placed on either side of Trip's head. Malcolm leant on his forearms, falling into the old rhythm.

Trip nibbled into Malcolm's neck, lightly, so as not to leave a mark. 

Malcolm moaned. 

"That's it," Trip said. "You just relax now."

" _God,_ yes," Malcolm whispered.

Trip's hand made its way down to his butt, pulling them together, heat against heat. He resisted the urge to push; this was about time, and peace. There was a gentleness to Malcolm, between his sharp edges and the aloneness, that he somehow wanted to nurture, even though Malcolm himself might have found dominance easier to understand.

Undirected, Malcolm reached for the closure on his uniform, pulling his jumpsuit away from his upper body. As he disentangled his arms from the jumpsuit sleeves, Trip touched his chest, gently, tracing the marks of the past on his skin. Malcolm watched him, almost expressionless, a tiny, affectionate smile curling at his mouth. 

Trip knew Malcolm would not take the initiative, not like this; so he unzipped his own jumpsuit and shucked it, as far as he could, baring his skin to the waist.

"You know," Malcolm whispered, "I know I've said this before, but I still can't believe Starfleet insists on regulation underpants. And vest... I mean, did they think we'd get chilly?... well, I suppose we did, didn't we?"

Holding his gaze, Trip reached out and peeled off Malcolm's vest, then his own. "You're hot enough without it," he said, knowing Malcolm would laugh, or frown, and either way, it would be okay.

"If you say so," Malcolm murmured, "it'd be rude to disagree. As a gentleman, I aim for a higher standard of _oh my God, Trip..._."

Trip let his hand linger on Malcolm's crotch. 

"I sure do appreciate your gentlemanly ways," he said. "You think maybe we could get the rest of this off? I left a blanket here somewhere we could roll out, 'cos it's cold here and we don't want you catchin' your death in the damp..."

"Oh, very well," said Malcolm, primly. "You'd better find that blanket, though. You know my, uh, gentleman's gentleman doesn't appreciate the cold." 

Trip stroked him, gently, through his uniform. "Seems mighty fine to me." But he let Malcolm roll off him, and turned away himself, making a fine show of finding the bedroll where he'd left it behind a couple of underused struts and an insulating plate and laying it out onto their wall/floor. Let Malcolm undress in his own time; slow and steady, that was the way. He lay down onto the soft foam, pulling a warm foil blanket over himself. Malcolm would join him when he was ready.

In the event, Malcolm landed on top of him, again, as though having done a thing once, it was worth doing it again, which perhaps it was; he pulled aside the blanket and pulled it over them both, trapping Trip in the cage of his arms and legs. He trapped Trip's head between his arms, elbows against his shoulders, and practically hissed, "What do you want from me... _sir_?"

Trip grabbed at his shoulder. "No titles. No Navy shit. It's just you and me, okay?"

Malcolm grinned. "Allow me the odd power fantasy, from time to time; and if you don't mind..." He pushed a questing knee between Trip's thighs, who obliged, giving Malcolm leave to explore his body, with wet, warm hands, slippery with oil. Malcolm's angular face calmed as he entered Trip, a reassuring weight on his chest and hips, firm and unyielding in the engineer's body. 

It was Trip who cried out first, though it might, on reflection, have been Malcolm. It might have been both of them. Neither of them would have admitted to being first, just as neither would admit to finishing first, so that they climaxed seemingly together, in a heap of sweaty, discarded clothing, half-covered by a foil blanket, their heads resting on one another's arms, bodies intertwined.

Malcolm exhaled deliberately. "Fuck me..." 

"Later," Trip said. 

"I meant, 'Fuck me, that was good'," Malcolm clarified. "But - I'll bear that offer seriously in mind."

"You will?" 

"Oh, yes. I intend to keep the sight of you lying there, dirty, disheveled and ready for round two; I imagine I'll be lying in bed later, a hand on myself, and the other..."

Trip raised an eyebrow. 

"Well, somewhere else, and I tell you this, I'll be imagining that it's you..."

"You're talkin' me round," Trip said. He was half hard again.

There was a sudden sound on the other side of the hatch. Trip pulled Malcolm to him, an act of pure instinct, and they listened in silence, Trip's hand half-on Malcolm's mouth, Malcolm laughing silently, his eyes full of joy. 

From the sounds of it, there were several crew out there, moving along the corridor towards the observation deck and the turbolift. The footsteps died rapidly away. 

Trip took his hand away. "D'you think they heard us?"

"Probably," Malcolm said. 

Trip thought about it. 

"Don't worry," Malcolm said. 

"No?" 

"Think about it as us doing our part for the tourist trade. They came down here _expecting_ to hear something, and they heard it." He licked at Trip's chest, watching his nipple shrivel in the cold. "As far as they're concerned, we're just a pair of hungry ghosts."

"Are you?"

"Am I what?"

"Still hungry?"

Malcolm kissed Trip, a long slow kiss, eyes closed, bodies close together, nude, warm and a little sticky. "Come over here," he said, "and you can find out for yourself."


End file.
